Monday, January 31, 2011

By the Hammer of Thor!!!

So I caved and made a blog.  I don't feel like catching you up day by day so we'll just start with today.  I was on duty, which means I get to stay back at the lab and basically clean it from top to bottom.  There's a list of things to do that if done correctly takes right around 7 hours to complete.  This by itself would be a pretty boring day, but the group that went out fishing for bait (mostly barracuda, but some jacks as well) found this instead...

Kinda tough to make out what it is, but it's an 11-foot hammerhead.  I should have an underwater camera in the next few weeks.  We'll start baiting specifically for these guys and we'll be able to get in the water with them, so sometime in the next month or so I'll have some sick underwater shots of some hammerheads.  They can get up to about 20 feet long and weigh over 1,500 pounds.  This one is only about half that size.  I can't even imagine seeing a full-grown hammerhead.

We tried to chase it up into shallower water so we could see him better, but these things just aren't afraid of anything when they get up to this size.  There's nothing in the ocean that can threaten it so he just kept on swimming along like we weren't even there.

Just a little perspective, the size of it compared to the boats we were in.  All in all, not a bad little break from a day of cleaning.

That's all for now.  I'll try to keep up with this every night, but I highly doubt that will happen given that the internet is a bit finnicky and I'm really lazy after a day of work.  Maybe I'll have some time to get some pictures of the lab and stuff and I'll throw them up here so you get an idea of the lifestyle.  Just a hint, it's fucking amazing.  Till next time.